End of the semester thoughts

It's finally drawing near: summer! It's been a really long year for me here at Spring Arbor...

As I write this, I'm sitting on the quiet floor of the library. This has been my home for this whole week: the time I've spent in here this week is more than all the time I've spent in here all year up to this point! I'm in kind of a tight spot with homework. My professors all got together and decided to assign all the biggest assignments of the year to be due this past Monday. Fun. Last week, my Biblical Interpretation class had the week off for class periods so we could work on an 8-10 page exegetical paper. Unfortunately, I had several other really large assignments that were due that week, and by the time I actually was able to come to the library to look for commentaries on the passage that I chose to write on, they were pretty much all taken by the others in my class. I couldn't even finish the preliminary research assignment for the paper until Monday...when the paper itself was due. I e-mailed my professor about this last Friday, asking for an extension because I wasn't going to be able to turn it in on Monday. He didn't really give me an extension, but he at least gave me some leniency and said the late penalty would be slight, just as long as I wrote it well. I'm working on finishing it today so I can hand it in at class tomorrow morning.

Last night I was at a worship/prayer service my good friend Steven started up this year called Rooted. Ron Kopicko, our university chaplain, came and spoke. He had one verse in particular that he shared with us...Philemon 20: "Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ." He then asked us a question that blew me away: "When's the last time someone was refreshed in Christ just by being around you?" Holy cow. That hurt. He challenged us to live a life of service without EVER expecting anything in return from anyone. Everything that he was saying hit me really hard last night. If every person who claimed to be a Christian lived this way...oh man, what would happen!?

I am so excited to be done with this semester. I've finally finished choir, and I am NEVER going back! We had our last concert this Tuesday, and I absolutely gave it the best I could. Good times. This weekend I'm taking a break from school before finals and heading home to have a giant Risk tourney with my friend Jon...it's gonna be EPIC.

Recently, I decided I should add another semester onto my time here at the Arb. I got the job as Spiritual Life Advisor (SLA) on Ormston 3 next year, I might be working as a youth group worship leader at a local church called Westwinds, I'm working on getting a band started up, and on top of all that, I had registered for 17 credits next semester! Needless to say, I kind of wanted to thin out my class schedule a little so that I could do the other things as best as I could.

Dag, yo. I can't wait for these two weeks to be over.

Peace.